Higher Education Webinars

University of Venus

I got an A+ in Porn. That fact still amuses and delights me, and in certain circles I am sure to find some semi-awkward way to bring it up in conversation. And while I would never claim to be an aficionado of pornographic film or erotic text, I did spend a great deal of time this past Winter in a Special Studies course exploring pornography, erotica and romance, focusing on the production of erotic writing by women.

What is motivation? On one hand we mean motive, or the reason for doing something; on the other we mean the energy and enthusiasm a person invests in the thing that she or he is doing. When teachers are talking about motivating students, it seems to me that the two meanings are conflated.

In travel, detours present unlikely possibilities. As an academic, I have taken very few of these in my quest to get published and move at the top of my specialization. I have always taken a purposeful approach towards my time and effort-- whether attending a conference (network! find publication outlets! project collaborators!) or picking a topic to read or write about (must tie in with the military! build up, not out, onto existing corpus of personal publication!).

Those of us who have been, or are, in graduate school have come across this mantra: publish or perish. What is important about this phrase is not only the unrelenting pressure it puts on graduate students and early career faculty to publish, but the unspoken lack of emphasis it places on teaching

I like being here when it’s unnervingly deserted. It’s a great time to make sure I’m up to speed on everything, and plan for the week ahead. I especially needed this time to regroup and catch up because of the way the previous week ended.

Suddenly tenure is within my grasp. I am a scholar who has done everything wrong (according to the academic standards). I was born a woman (!), I choose to study literature (not a lot of career opportunities), I decided to focus on popular culture (the horror of it) and showed an interest in historical romances and chick lit (disaster) and then I aged (never a good thing). When I started my doctoral studies in Sweden in the 1990s I had a lot of confidence and a lot of fight in me. I had taken every course in gender studies and feminist theory that was available at that time.